Many different effects can salvage a crappy backline situation. A nice reverb goes a long way toward making a lame amp sound okay. A delay or compressor can usually lend a little energy and mystery to an otherwise lifeless tone, too. But in my experience, few effects coax magic from garbage quite like tremolo.
Mariner Tremolo
Just ask Keith Richards. For the spooky-as-hell guitar track that underpins “Gimme Shelter,” Keith used a Triumph solid-state amp that legendary engineer and producer Glyn Johns hated. But while Johns may have thought the Triumph sounded lame, it had a tremolo circuit Keith loved. Go ahead, give the song a listen. It’s hard to imagine “Gimme Shelter” without that haunting pulse.
Maestro Mariner Tremolo Pedal
Maestro’s Mariner tremolo has the same potential to rescue a lifeless track or performance. It’s not the most refined tremolo (it can come on a bit strong at times), nor does it sound like an approximation of any vintage standard. (It sounded very different from a black-panel Fender Tremolux and Vibroverb, as well as an excellent digital take on those circuits.) Functionally speaking, it will probably remind many players of the Boss TR-2, with its depth, speed, and wave shape controls, which move between sine and square waveforms. Even its controls are arranged in an inverse triangle like the Boss. But the Mariner offers a second, more phase-y mode that it calls harmonic tremolo, which approximates, to some extent, the harmonic vibrato on some early-’60s Fender brown-panel amps. That extends the practical and fun potential of the Mariner.
Pick Your Pulse
If you’re a stickler for vintage-correct emulations, Mariner might not be your first pick for a pedal tremolo. That doesn’t mean it lacks vintage feel, though. In classic mode (it’s not clear if this all-analog circuit was designed to approximate an optical tremolo circuit, bias tremolo, or neither), you can dial in very pretty, immersive modulations that will sound more than adequately vintage-like in a mix. Classic settings are also easy to shape in creative ways with the waveform knob. Compared to what’s arguably the affordable analog tremolo standard bearer, the Boss TR-2, the Mariner’s maximum depth and square wave settings are more pronounced and intense. Some of this intensity might be due to the fact that the Mariner is flat-out louder. Tremolo-pedal makers often build in a very mild boost to compensate for the perceived loss of signal that accompanies some tremolo effects, and Maestro certainly seems to have included one here. The Mariner is perceptibly louder than both a TR-2 and a Strymon Flint.
Even still, Mariner’s harmonic mode is rich and charming, and the wobbly pulses lend a very psychedelic edge.
The Mariner could be more nuanced at times. The classic mode’s pulses, for instance, sometimes seem more hard-edged than liquid. These less-fluid modulations can be even more pronounced in the harmonic tremolo mode. Many players, however, will prefer this texture, even though amp-based harmonic tremolo tends to sound smooth and contoured. Still, Mariner’s harmonic mode is rich and charming, and the wobbly pulses lend a very psychedelic edge. And at slower rates, in particular, the harmonic mode finds its stride. The modulations are phasey and elastic and can sound both beautiful and striking in the right setting.
The Verdict
At nearly 160 bucks, the Mariner is priced near the top end of the affordable tremolo class. But Mariner’s secret weapon may be the fact that it sounds vintage without clearly imitating other circuits or sounding too generic. That relative individuality, plus its extra output, make it an appealing option for those who’d rather not default to the most obvious standard.
Orbit Phaser
One of my favorite ways to make a tremolo pedal like the Mariner sound even cooler than it already does is by situating a phaser downstream. I tend to disagree with guitarists that regard phase as one-dimensional. I’ve seen ripping players with great dynamic touch and broad tone palettes that almost never turn them off. And it’s always impressive how they weave a phaser’s cool mysterious sense of motion into a complex whole instead of placing the modulation front and center.
Maestro Orbit Phaser Pedal
There’s a lot more flexibility to do that these days now that phasers have evolved so considerably from early one-knob classics. Maestro’s Orbit Phaser walks the line between contemporary and complex, and vintage and stupidly simple, though it tends toward the latter. So, while it lacks some of the fine-tuning features you see on more powerful units, it facilitates creation of subtle, backgrounded blends and much more prominent modulations.
You Gotta Move
The Orbit’s phase is bold and clear. There is no perceived signal loss—a problem that plagues a lot of older analog phasers and which becomes a fear among many first-time phaser shoppers. In some situations, the Orbit cuts because of a very pronounced midrange emphasis. The pedal adds a distinct tone color—midrange-y enough to evoke a cocked wah or filter at certain settings and with certain guitars. There are some awesome applications for the voice. For example, I paired the pedal with a Telecaster on which I rolled the tone way back. The resulting skwonky waveforms I heard could transform an otherwise dull part into something hooky and weird. The midrangey voice also meshes very nicely with PAF-style humbuckers, creating pronounced, muscular waveforms that cut in jangly settings or psychedelic blues solos. The Orbit sounds extra cool and assertive at fast modulation rates—another neat way to pepper up a same-old fake-Jimi solo. It also sounded bolder in this setting than the very old and familiar Small Stone and Phase 90 I used for reference.
The Orbit sounds extra cool and assertive at fast modulation rates.
At slower rates—the kind that, say, you would use for The Dark Side of the Moon tracks, soul ballads, or Waylon Jennings jams—the Maestro’s mid-focused voice works less well. Rather, the more open-ended and less specific voices of the Phase 90 and Small Stone let your signal breathe a lot more across the frequency spectrum, while the Orbit feels punkier and more snarling. Which flavor is better is totally subjective. But I would say Orbit’s slow phase tones read as a little less liquid than those from the old MXR and Electro-Harmonix units.
The Verdict
The Orbit Phaser can be a real joy for how unique it sounds. Faster rate settings are particularly rich. The ability to tailor width and feedback enables loads of contrasting subtle-to-robust waveforms. The 4-and-6-stage modes provide additional versatility, though the differences between them is less pronounced than on some phasers with that option. The Orbit’s range would make it the ideal candidate for an always-on phaser, and there will be players who use it in just that fashion. But the strong midrange emphasis will probably dissuade many from using it that way— especially those that primarily use single-coils. Humbucker players might have a different experience. The Orbit’s voice gets along great with a PAF. And that’s just one of many intriguing and satisfying sounds here.
Agena Envelope Filter
To a large segment of the guitar-playing populace, “envelope filter” usually means “auto wah” or “that quacky thing.” Most good envelope filters do that stuff. It’s probably what most buyers expect of them. But envelope filters can do other really cool things. They can effectively work like high-contrast EQ presets—transforming solos as radically as a fuzz can. They can also work like dynamic phasers and summon interesting phrasings from pedestrian chord changes and melodic lines, particularly when you get used to working in bendy, elastic give-and-take tandem with the effect. Correspondingly, they are great tools for digging out of a rut.
Maestro Agena Envelope Filter Pedal
Maestro’s Agena lives a little less on the quacky end of the filter spectrum, trading some of those hyper-vowely, percussive and snappy filtering qualities for a more expansive dynamic palette and a little more control over attack. But for anyone keen to explore the effect beyond Jerry Garcia and Bootsy Collins sound archetypes, it will seem much more forgiving and usable than many more clearly Mu-Tron III-derived circuits.
Practical in Practice
If you’re at all put off by envelope filters because their controls are counterintuitive on the surface, you should not fear the Agena. Even if you’re not familiar with how envelope filters are supposed to work, it’s easy to feel your way through how they interact and respond to the input from your guitar and fingers.
The sense knob governs how much picking energy is required before the envelope is activated. Attack controls how fast the envelop opens. Decay regulates how long the filter stays open. A small toggle will be familiar to old-school Mu-Tron and Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron users. It assigns emphasis to higher or lower frequency ranges. The controls are fairly interactive. You can set up classic quacky sounds by cranking up the sense and attack controls and situating the decay control in the middle third of its range. More subdued, less vowel-y tones lurk at faster decay rates, where you can also coax great narrow-focus filter sounds that evoke old octave effects like the Ampeg Scrambler or Dan Armstrong Green Ringer.
You can also coax great narrow-focus filter sounds that evoke old octave effects like the Ampeg Scrambler or Dan Armstrong Green Ringer.
Because the Agena is a dynamically controlled filter, it responds to any change in your input signal. So, it reacts differently to varied pick attack and heavier or thinner picks. Boosts and overdrive remove dynamic range but can add emphasis to quacky and vowelly filter responses or filter effects that highlight specific frequencies. Different guitars and pickups can have very different relationships, too. Telecaster bridge pickups were especially good for coaxing dynamic phase sounds at high-sense/fast-attack/medium-decay settings. PAF-style humbuckers, meanwhile, sounded hot and vocal.
The Verdict
In some ways, the Agena could be the envelope filter for people that don’t like envelope filters. It rarely feels like an all-or-none proposition, and the filter is capable of many sounds in between Grateful Dead caricature and less loaded voices. It also rewards players who pursue less obvious, droning playing approaches as opposed to those who play it funky. But even if it’s just classic quack you’re after, the Agena gives you many shades to work with.
Maestro [Gibson] Mariner Tremolo, Titan Boost, Arcas Compressor, Agena Filter & Orbit Phaser Demos
Andy Powers has been working with electric guitars his whole life, and he’s been slowly collecting all the ideas that could go into his own “solo project,” waiting for the right time to strike.
As CEO, president, and chief guitar designer of Taylor Guitars, Andy Powers has an unimaginable amount of experience sifting through his ideas and, with a large production mechanism at hand, efficiently and effectively realizing them. He knows that there are great ideas that need more time, and rethinking electric guitar design—from the neck to the pickups to how its hollow body is constructed—doesn’t come quickly. His A-Type—which has appeared in Premier Guitarin the hands of guitarists Andy Summers and Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard—is the innovative flagship model of his new brand, Powers Electric. And it’s the culmination of a lifetime of thought, experience, and influences.
“Southern California is a birthplace of a lot of different things. I think of it as the epicenter of electric guitar.”
“I’ve got a lot of musician friends who write songs and have notebooks of ideas,” explains Powers. “They go, ‘I’ve got these three great verses and a bridge, but no chorus. I’ll just put it on the shelf; I’ll come back to it.’ Or ‘I’ve got this cool hook,’ or ‘I’ve got this cool set of chord changes,’ or whatever it might be—they’re half-finished ideas. And once in a while, you take them off the shelf, blow the dust off, and go, ‘That’s a really nice chorus. Maybe I should write a couple of verses for it someday. But not today.’ And they put it back.”
That’s how his electric guitar design spent decades collecting in Powers’ head. There were influences that he wanted to play with that fell far afield from his acoustic work at Taylor, and he saw room to look at some technical aspects of the instrument a little differently, with his own flair.
The Powers Electric A-Type draws from Powers’ lifelong influences of cars, surfing, and skateboarding.
Over the course of Powers’ “long personal history” with the instrument, he’s built, played, restored, and repaired electric guitars. And, having grown up in Southern California, surrounded by custom-car culture, skateboarding, and surfing—all things he loves—he sees the instrument as part of his design DNA.
“Southern California is a birthplace of a lot of different things,” Powers explains. “I think of it as the epicenter of electric guitar. Post-World War II, you had Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby and Les Paul—all these guys living within just a couple of miles of each other. And I grew up in those same sorts of surroundings.”
Those influences and the ideas about what to do with them kept collecting without a plan to take action. “At some point,” he says, “you need the catalyst to go, ‘Hey, you know what? I actually have the entire guitar’s worth of ideas sitting right in front of me, and they all go together. I would want to play that guitar if it existed. Now is a good time to build that guitar.’”
“I started thinking, ‘If I had been alive then, what would I have made?’ It’s kind of an open-ended question, because at that point, well, there’s no parts catalogs to buy stuff from. A lot of these things hadn’t been invented yet. How would you interpret this?”
The pandemic ultimately served as the catalyst Powers’ electric guitars needed, and that local history proved to be a jumping-off point necessary for focusing his long-marinating ideas. “I started thinking, ‘If I had been alive then, what would I have made?’ It’s kind of an open-ended question, because at that point, well, there’s no parts catalogs to buy stuff from. A lot of these things hadn’t been invented yet. How would you interpret this? As a designer, I think that’s really interesting. Overlay that with understanding what happens to electric guitars and how people want to use them, as well as some acoustic engineering. Well, that’s pretty fascinating. That’s an interesting mix.”
Tucked away in his home workshop, Powers set about designing a guitar, building “literally every little bit other than a couple screws” including handmade and hand-polished knobs. Soon, the prototype for the Powers Electric A-Type was born. “I played this guitar and went, ‘I’ve been waiting a long time to play this guitar.’ A friend played it and went, ‘I want one, too.’ Okay, I’ll make another one. Made two more. Made three more….”
The A-Type—seen here with both vibrato and hardtail—is a fully hollow guitar that is built in what Powers calls a “hot-rod shop” on the Taylor Guitars campus.
From there, Powers recalls that he started bringing his ideas back to his shop on Taylor’s campus, where he set up “essentially a small hot-rod shop” to build these new guitars. “It’s a real small-scale operation,” he explains. “It exists here at Taylor Guitars, but in its own lane.”
The A-Type—currently the only planned Powers Electric model—has the retro appeal of classic SoCal electrics. Its single-cut body style is unique but points to the curvature of midcentury car designs, and the wide range of vibrant color options help drive that home. Conceptually, the idea of reinventing each piece of the guitar’s hardware points toward the instrument’s creators. That might get a vintage guitar enthusiast’s motor running, but it’s in the slick precision of those parts—from the bridge and saddle to the pickup components—where the A-Type’s modernism shines.
“It’s a real small-scale operation. It exists here at Taylor Guitars, but in its own lane.”
Grabbing hold of the guitar, it’s clearly an instrument living on the contemporary cutting edge. The A-Type’s neck gives the clearest indication that it’s a high-performance machine; it’s remarkably easy to fret, with low action but just enough bite across the board. Powers put a lot of thought into the fretboard dynamics that make that so, and he decided to create a hybrid radius. “You have about a 9 1/2" radius, which is really what your hand feels, but then under the plain strings, it’s a bit flatter at 14, 15-ish—it’s so subtle, it’s really tough to measure.” Without reading the specs and talking to Powers, I don’t know that I would detect the difference—and I certainly didn’t upon first try. It just felt easy to play precisely without losing character or veering into “shredder guitar” territory.
The A-Type looks like a solidbody, but you’ll know it’s hollow by its light, balanced weight. That makes it comfortable to hold, whether standing or sitting. But its hollow-ness is no inhibitor to style: I’ve yet to provoke any unintended feedback from any of my amps. Powers explains that’s part of the design, which uses V-class bracing, similar to what you’ll find on a modern Taylor acoustic.
Powers says the A-Type that is now being produced is no different than the prototype he built in his home workshop: “I have the blueprint, still, that I hand drew. I can hold the guitar that we’re making up against that drawing, and it would be like I traced over it.”
“Coupling the back and the top of the guitar matter a lot,” he asserts. “When you do that, you can make them move in parallel so that they are not prone to feeding back on stage. You don’t actually have that same Helmholtz resonance going on that makes a hollowbody guitar feedback. It’s still moving.”
On a traditional hollowbody, he points out, the top and back move independently, compressing the air inside the body. “It’ll make one start to run away by re-amplifying its own sound,” he explains. “But if I can make them touch each other, then they move together as a unit. When they do that, you’re not compressing the air inside the body. But it’s still moving. So, you get this dynamic resonance that you want out of a hollowbody guitar; it’s just not prone to feedback.”
What I hear from the A-Type is a rich, dynamic tone, full of resonance, sustain, and volume. I found it to be surprisingly loud and vibrant when unplugged. Powers tells me that’s in part due to the “stressed spherical top” and explains, “I take this piece of wood and I stress it into a sphere, which unnaturally raises its resonant frequency well above what the piece of wood normally could. It’s kind of sprung, ready to set in motion as soon as you strike the string. So, it becomes a mechanical amplifier.” The bridge then sits in two soundposts, which Powers says makes it “almost like a cello.”
“Literally every little bit other than a couple screws” on the A-Type is custom made.
The single-coil pickups take it from there. They’re available in two variations, Full Faraday and Partial Faraday, the latter of which were in my demo model, and Powers tells me they are the brighter option. Their design, he says, has been in progress for about seven or eight years. The concept behind the pickups is to use the “paramagnetic quality of aluminum”—found in the pickup housing—“to shape the magnetic field … which functions almost like a Faraday cage.” And he complements them with a simple circuit on the way out.
I found them to run quietly, as promised, and offer a transparent tone with plenty of headroom. They paired excellently with the ultra-responsive playability and feel of the guitar, so I could play as dynamically as I desired. If a standard solidbody with single-coils offers the performance of a practical sedan, this combo gave the A-Type the feel of a well-tuned racecar. At low volumes and with no pedals, it felt like I was simply amplifying the guitar’s acoustic sound, and I had full control with nothing but my pick. (Powers explains that the pickups have a wide resonance peak, which plays out to my ear.) Add pedals to the mix, including distortion and fuzz, and that translates to an articulated, hi-fi sound.
Now up to serial number XXX, the Powers Electric team has refined their production process. I wonder about that first guitar, the dream guitar Powers built in his house. How similar is the guitar I’m holding to his original vision? “It’s very, very, very close,” Powers tells me. “Literally, this guitar outline is a tracing. It’s an exact duplicate of what I first drew on paper with a pencil. I have the blueprint, still, that I hand drew. I can hold the guitar that we’re making up against that drawing, and it would be like I traced over it.”
“It’s one of those things you do because you just really want to do it. It puts some spark in your life.”
Playing the guitar and, later, talking through its features, I’m left with few questions. But one that remains has to do with branding and marketing, not the instrument: Why go to all the effort to create a new brand for the A-Type, which is to say, why isn’t this a Taylor? For Powers, it’s about design. “As guitar players,” he explains, “we know what Taylor guitars are, we know what it stands for, and we know what we do. The design language of a Taylor guitar is a very specific thing. When I look at a Taylor acoustic guitar, I go, ‘I need curves like this, I need colors like this, I need shapes like this.’”
Those aren’t the same curves, colors, and shapes as the Powers Electric design, nor do they mine the same influences. “There’s a look and a feel to what a Taylor is. And that is different from this. I look at this and go, ‘It’s not the same.’”
Of course, adding the A-Type to the well-established Taylor catalog would probably be easier in lots of ways, but Powers’ positioning of the brand is a sign of his dedication to the project. It feels like a labor of love. “They’re guitars that I really wanted to make,” he tells me enthusiastically. “And I’m excited that they get to exist. It’s one of those things you do because you just really want to do it. It puts some spark in your life.”
“It’s like a solo project,” he continues. “As musicians, you front this band, you do this thing, and you also like these other kinds of music and you’ve got other musician friends, and you want to do something that’s a different flavor. You try to make some space to do that, too.”
Oklahoma City sludge rockers Chat Pile have had a busy few years. Their 2022 LP, God’s Country, broke them internationally, and their critically acclaimed 2024 follow-up, Cool World, solidified them as one of the most exciting heavy bands of the moment. We spoke with bassist Stin and guitarist Luther Manhole about the record for our November 2024 issue.
Now, we bring you the band’s first official Rig Rundown, filmed ahead of their show at The End in Nashville last fall. Tune in to see how Stin and Luther conjure the band’s brutal soundstorms on the road.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Bari Blast
Manhole’s main machine is this baritone 6-string, an Ernie Ball Music Man BFR Axis Super Sport, finished in “starry night.” Luther took a tip from tourmate and Agriculture guitarist Richard Chowenhill and slapped some tape over his neck pickup near the first string to prevent it from catching on the edge of the humbucker. It’s tuned to drop A, with Ernie Ball Mammoth Slinky strings.
Quite the Quilter
Back at home, Luther and Stin lean on big vintage amps, but on the road, Luther brings out this Quilter Tone Block 202, which is plugged into an Ampeg VT-40 combo amp that’s been gutted to run just as a 4x10 cabinet. Luther digs the icier, cutting tone from the 10″ speakers.
Luther Manhole's Board
Manhole’s board is minimalist: All he needs is a TC Electronic PolyTune, a Suhr Riot for dirt, an Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy (which is set for a wobbly chorus effect), and a TC Electronic Hall of Fame for reverb—pedals he’s used for over a decade. An Acoustic PBIS08 supplies the quartet with power.
Peavey Power
Around 2007, Stin went on a hunt around Oklahoma music shops for a Peavey T-40. He finally found one—in a total “Wayne’s World moment”—that belonged to a country singer who had passed away. Since the band’s formation, this “hot and clangy” white T-40 has been Stin’s tool for crafting Chat Pile’s elephantine, bottom-heavy sound. He uses the 5-string Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalts (.060–.125), omitting the .040 string, and plucks with orange Ernie Ball Everlast .73 mm picks for strong, percussive attack.
Building Blocks
Stin’s signal runs to this Quilter Bass Block 802, which blasts through a Trace Elliot 4x10 redline cab with horns—the cab that’s been used on every Chat Pile recording to date.
Stin's Board
Stin probably thinks Manhole’s board is excessive. He packs just his Boss TU-3 and a Tronographic Rusty Box, each with their own individual power supply plugged into a power bar that’s fixed to the board.
